It's Good Friday - the day where the Lord and Savior was executed by His own people - all because he worked against the establishment. Granted, they were unwittingly fulfilling a prophesy. Capital punishment was alive and well in biblical times.
This week, my former home state (Connecticut) voted to abolish the death penalty. Now there is very little connection between the crucifixion of Jesus and a punishment of death handed down from the American judicial system. The times Jesus lived in were far more wrought with political corruption and power mongering than things are today. If you're sentenced to death in one of the 33 remaining death penalty states, it's probably because you killed at least one person - or at least the state's prosecution convinced twelve people with whom you have no connection that you did.
I used to be a fairly staunch supporter of the death penalty - mainly for the justice of it. If you kill someone, you made it clear that you do not value the sanctity of life, so why should anyone look at you with that level of compassion? I've since come to the conclusion that, from a Christian standpoint, an eye for an eye doesn't apply anymore. As a murderer, you get the rest of your life to contemplate the lives you destroyed. It doesn't really rehabilitate the sociopaths out there, but at least they're not part of the general population anymore.
Where I get cross with capital punishment is the lack of consistency from both sides of the aisle on the issue. On the red side of the aisle, you have the ultra-right out there saying that murderers must be put to death for justice while beating their Old Testament calling for an eye for an eye. They conveniently leave out what Christ says about judgement and loving your enemies. On the blue side, the left-wing socialists are quick to point out exactly that - love your enemy, but in the same breath state that religion plays no role in government. Basically each side uses arguments that they shouldn't be able to use - because they don't wholly support the background for those arguments.
Here's where I fall - capital punishment is a political issue. Do I believe in it? No. The complete cluster that is the American judicial system promises nothing more than a fair trial, not that the outcome is correct. If you can't be 100% sure that someone really did it, you can't execute them. Justice isn't served because of "reasonable doubt." However, you can't stand up and say, "I'm for the death penalty" if you're using the example of Christ as your argument. You also can't stand up and say, "I'm against the death penalty" if you're going to deny Christ the second some kid leads a prayer at a football game (which we still do in Texas, thankyouverymuch).
So, getting back to the politics of it, governments make their laws and punishments based not on what Paul says to the Romans, but on justice. If the state determines that it is justified that someone has to be put to death for murdering a police officer after Christmas Eve dinner with his family, then they should make that law. If a state determines that murderer just needs 60 years in an 8x8 cell for that crime, it should make that law. If I don't like it, I can vote for another lawmaker. My person may not win that election, but that's the extent of my say in it. Best I can do is pray for the people involved, that God may bring them the clarity they need to make the decisions they believe best for the situation.
So why am I picking on Connecticut? This is a political move. The good folks in Hartford have said that the death penalty doesn't work as a deterrent, and therefore it should no longer be on the table. Connecticut has executed as many people in the last fifty years as Texas has in the last two weeks. There are currently 11 death row inmates in CT, none of whom were ever going to be put to death because of the chain of appeals. SO, what our Yankee friends have done is basically repeal a law akin to "It is unlawful to walk across a prairie with a pair of wire cutters." It's hard to take a law seriously when it's never enforced. The lawmakers are heroes because they took the moral high road. *slow clap* But don't you talk about Christmas Break!! There is no Christmas here! Only HOLIDAY break!
Never mind that we used to get out of school for every Jewish holiday.
